Harriet Martineau: Encyclopedia II - Harriet Martineau - Ambleside

Harriet Martineau - Ambleside

In 1844 Miss Martineau underwent a course of mesmerism, and in a few months was restored to health. She eventually published an account of her case, which had caused much discussion, in sixteen Letters on Mesmerism. This led to friction with 'the natural prejudices of a surgeon and a surgeon's wife' and in 1845 she left Tynemouth for Ambleside in the Lake District, where she built herself "The Knoll", the house in which the greater part of her later life was spent.

In 1845 she published three volumes of Forest and Game Law Tales. In 1846 she made a tour with some friends in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, and on her return published Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848). This travelogue showed that as humanity passed through one after another of the world's historic religions, the conception of the Deity and of Divine government became at each step more and more abstract and indefinite. The ultimate goal Miss Martineau believed to be philosophic atheism, but this belief she did not expressly declare. It described ancient tombs, "the black pall of oblivion" set against the paschal "puppet show" in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with the message that Christian beliefs in reward and punishment were based on heathen superstitions. Describing an ancient Egyptian tomb, she wrote "How like ours were his life and death!.. Compare him with a retired naval officer made country gentleman in our day, and in how much less do they differ than agree!" The book's "infidel tendency" was too much for the publisher John Murray, who rejected it.

She published at about this time Household Education, expounding the theory that freedom and rationality, rather than command and obedience, are the most effectual instruments of education. Her interest in schemes of instruction led her to start a series of lectures, addressed at first to the school children of Ambleside, but afterwards extended, at their own desire, to their elders. The subjects were sanitary principles and practice, the histories of England and North America, and the scenes of her Eastern travels. At the request of Charles Knight she wrote, in 1849, The History of the Thirty Years' Peace, 1816–1846 – an excellent popular history written from the point of view of a "philosophical Radical," completed in twelve months.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ambleside", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki